


A Clinical Trial

by noxelementalist



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anchors, M/M, Missing Scene, Surprises, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 18:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19978234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxelementalist/pseuds/noxelementalist
Summary: In which Jackson has an inappropriate anchor





	A Clinical Trial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tarlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/gifts).



> Written for Tarlan as part of Rare Male Slash Exchange 2019. I hope you love reading it as much I did writing it (‘cause I can’t believe anybody else finds this pairing interesting besides us!)
> 
> Set between the season 2 and season 3.

“So this is it.”

“Yes.”

“You live in a loft in the artsy part of town?”

“I do.”

Jackson hummed thoughtfully. “Cool,” he said at last. “I _love_ the view.”

Derek resisted the urge to scowl. It had only been a few days since he, Peter, and Isaac had seen the mark on the old Hale house door saying that an entire pack of Alphas were coming. Derek hadn’t needed a second mark to immediately move him and Peter to somewhere on the other side of town, especially since there hadn’t been much to move anyway. Even outfitting the loft hadn’t taken much energy with Peter’s help and his mostly neglected bank account.

Once they were settled Derek had then tried to reach out to everyone else still in Beacon Hills, but the fighting with Matt and the Argents this past year had clearly taken its toll.

Erica and Boyd had either run off together or already been taken by the Alpha pack because Derek couldn’t find them _at all_. Isaac was growing closer to Allison after she’d dumped Scott, making all attempts at conversation pointless since they were squeezed between almost dates and mooning preteens. And Scott and Stiles— the two Derek had sought out the most because they _had_ masterminded taking down Gerard Argent— had made it clear to him that their summer plans consisted of lacrosse, video games, and doing _anything_ unrelated to werewolves.

It was the kind of teen angst that, for Derek, had ended with a double-digit body count and sentimental fluff pieces in the Beacon Hills local newspaper. A body count that was now likely to grow higher due to his _impending death_ at the hand of _a pack of Alphas_. All of which meant that, in the end, Derek had been forced to reach out to the first teenager he’d ever bitten: Jackson Whittemore, who’d almost _drowned_ Derek and spent months being a mind control puppet for both Matt and the Argents.

He’d done it through email. A very carefully worded e-mail that Peter had helped him write. It hadn’t been much: an offer to help Jackson figure out how to control being a werewolf with a tacked on “sorry we killed you so you could become a real werewolf,” while leaving unspoken “which is something neither of us would’ve had to live through if you’d just joined with me in the first place.”

But it must’ve been convincing because here the rising junior was, dressed in V-neck tee with the Ralph Lauren polo horse graphically stretched across it and dark skinny jeans, standing in the middle of Derek’s loft.

 _This is all you’ve got Derek,_ Derek reminded himself as he watched the teenager continue to glance around with all the precision of a posed model. _Jackson and Peter. It’s them or no one._

“I’m…glad to hear it,” Derek said calmly after a moment. “You wanna take a seat?”

“Pushy. Must be why everybody left,” Jackson muttered as he paced around the room, the words making Derek bristle.

“Excuse me _—_ ”

“Hey, where’d your zombie uncle go to?”

“Peter …went to do some information scouting for me.”

“Sure he did.”

“He did,” Derek insisted.

It was technically true. Peter _had_ headed south to find assistance outside of Beacon Hills. The fact that south was in Mexico, and Derek questioned if he’d be coming back anytime soon, wasn’t something Jackson needed to know.

“Whatever you say wolf-man,” Jackson said as he came to stop against the kitchen counter, lounging back against it like he was too cool to be anything other than vertical. “So, what’s the plan on the werewolf thing?”

“Lots of training,” Derek replied. “Some work on finding your anchor. Then—”

“Wait, training?”

“Training.”

“Better not be cross-training, cause I’m telling you right now, abs are welcomed everywhere but overachievers? Not so much.”

“Seriously?” Derek questioned. “You’re afraid of _over-achieving,_ mister lacrosse _and_ swim team captain?”

“No, but I’ve already died once,” Jackson said smugly. “Don’t want time number two to be from were-yoga.”

***

“ _How_ is this so hard for you?”

“If I could spread my legs, it wouldn’t be.”

“Fine,” Derek said, uncrossing his legs. “Knock sitting meditation off the list.”

“One down,” Jackson said, shaking his legs as he stood up. “What’s next?”

“Give me a second,” Derek replied, beginning to review in his mind the list of techniques they’d been working on.

Jackson couldn’t sit still long enough for sitting meditation. Jackson could mouth a chant, but they seemed to drift out of his head the second he sat behind the wheel of his car and drove away from Derek’s because he’d never remember them the next time he came back to the loft, so there had gone singing meditation. They’d tried yoga, which had started well: Jackson had turned out to be startlingly supple, and the poses had come naturally to him. But a full sun salutation routine turned out to be five minutes more than Jackson had patience for, so there’d gone that.

Jackson could run and spar about as well as Derek would’ve wanted, but he continued to refuse to do any more exercise beyond the conditioning he was doing to stay fit for his captaincy, so exercise to anchor was gone. Jackson didn’t do art _or_ music— which actually surprised Derek, because any teenager Derek known who’d been even half as big into high fashion as Jackson seemed to be had always had a passing interest in something creative—and he didn’t read for fun, which meant pretty much all the fine arts were a no-go zone.

Pretty much the only thing Jackson did, as far as Derek could figure out, was hang out with Danny, with Lydia, with his folks. With Derek. It was always for a couple of hours, an afternoon, before he’d be off to the next person, and from the stories Jackson would tell there were other traits of his Derek could pick up on. Traits like how loyal Jackson was (“Danny and I go back to our uncool days man,” he had said, swiping at Derek, “no one gets to hate on him.”) and how caring he was (“don’t tell Lydia, but _The Notebook_? Not half bad.”)

How much Jackson’s whole sunglass-wearing, cooler-than-you rep was an act Derek’s high school trash-talk habits could throw off, which Derek had proved when he got Jackson to face-plant out of a cobra pose onto the floor by calling Jackson’s arms cubby butterflies.

It had taken all of June for Derek to figure this out, and Derek wasn’t above admitting to himself that hanging out with the younger man had made for one of the more emotionally healthy summers Derek had had in years.

But now it was July, and the pack of Alpha wolves could be arriving any day. Jackson had managed to learn any skill Derek thought could be useful for him as werewolf, but still hadn’t find his anchor. It was _frustrating_ , and Derek found begun to feel that maybe Stiles had had a point in chucking lacrosse balls at Scott to get him to find his. The pain approach sucked, but if it got results so they wouldn’t die, Derek was willing to give it a go.

“Yeah, I got nothing,” Derek admitted at last. “Most people find an anchor by now.”

“…right.”

“…there’s always next time, isn’t there?”

“Not for me there isn’t,” Jackson told him. “I’m moving to London.”

“What,” Derek said flatly as he watched Jackson recline onto his couch like he was too morally pure just to flop down on it. It was an improvement from the first time he’d stepped into the loft and posed against the counter, but it irritated Derek to know the teen hadn’t reached the point of being comfortable enough to just…be a sit down like all the other werewolves in the world would around an Alpha.”

[Derek had gone over what being an Alpha or a Beta meant, but it seemed to Jackson the whole thing had translated to “an Alpha in the streets but a furry everywhere else,” which…had been so much like something Peter—who still hadn’t returned from Mexico— would say that Derek had let it slide on instinct.

This was, Derek would realize many years later, a very bad call.]

“You heard me. London,” Jackson said. “We’re moving to London by the end of the month. My folks have decided Beacon Hills is too dangerous for my rich orphan adopted butt.”

“That’s—”

“Figures, right?”

“Right. Right, that’s—”

“So as much as werewolf summer camp has been the highlight of my life,” Jackson continued, “we gotta start wrapping this up, because the eighties are dead and I’m not David Naughton.”

“You still need to find—”

“I’ve got the moves down, and I know I got the healing thing down—”

“You still. need. To find. Your anchor,” Derek gritted out, trying not to reveal how much the idea of being left _entirely alone_ to fight a pack of Alphas was making him begin to panic.

Jackson rolled his eyes. “Do I though?” he asked. “Personally I think it’s time we moved onto bigger—”

“Everything else _only_ _works_ if you can maintain it _under stress_ ,” Derek insisted. “And that means you need something to hold it together. To tether you. To—”

“Anchor me? No need to run through the dictionary Hale.”

“And that’s true whether you’re here or in London,” Derek continued. “I’m basically only still alive because I can hold it together under panic.”

“…so does this anchor thing have to be love or something?”

Derek blinked. “No, but it doesn’t hurt if it is? You _can_ have feelings as a werewolf you know.”

Jackson glared at him, a frosty look made up of sharp, light eyes and a sharper, rectangular jawline jutting out at Derek like a pale block of marble.

“What? You can,” Derek repeated, and not for the first time since they’d started Derek found himself wondering why feelings freaked out Jackson so much, especially given how his kanima days came to end when his Lydia had told him she loved him. Then again, being saved from the control of Argent hunters by the power of unasked-for love was terrifying.

Not that Derek and Jackson had ever spoken about that.

Or about being orphans who didn’t get to hear the whole “I love you” thing that much anymore anyway, but that just wasn’t going to come up in conversation.

“I’m just _asking_ ,” Jackson was saying from the couch. “You keep saying we gotta find it, but you haven’t said what it _is_ yet.”

“That’s because your anchor can be anything,” Derek explained. “A person, a place, a thing. A phrase you say, a memory you recall. A Feeling.”

“Nouns and adjectives?”

“Even verbs, believe it or not.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhmm. But probably not articles and smaller part of speech.”

“Right. And we’ve been doing arts, crafts, and rec time so I can noun and verb things?”

“Yes. Why’d you jump to love though?” Derek asked suddenly.

Jackson shrugged. “Worked for Scott and Allison.”

“I—”

“And it’s what helped me _not_ be a remote-controlled half Godzilla.”

“Yeah, we’re all happy you didn’t grow to the point of having wings.”

“I would rock leather wings,” Jackson said aloud, briefly disorientating Derek with the image of the other man with black bat wings sprouting out his back that matched whatever black preppie designer jeans he’d have walked around in. “What other feelings could it be?”

“Mine’s rage at the death of my loved ones.”

Jackson snorted. “I already have a therapist, thanks,” he said. “And way to be emotionally healthy Batman.”

Derek smirked. “At least I’m not like Peter.”

“Being zombie-Superman would be an improvement.”

“He’d agree with you, but he also uses rage as an anchor.”

“But anchors can’t _actually_ be _anything_? It’s not like wanting to have sex could be an anchor. _Hey_ ,” Jackson said perking up excitedly, “ _could_ wanting to get—”

“Yes,” Derek muttered, cutting him off quickly. “One of my aunts…was like that.”

“Hot.”

“Shut up, she’s dead.”

“Overheated huh?”

“Shut. Up.”

Jackson rolled his eyes. “Right, tragic fire death and all,” he drawled. “Well, I’m willing to give getting laid a try.”

“Excuse me?”

“Let’s face it,” Jackson stated to the surprised werewolf. “I’m not big into pain or Buddhist werewolf crafts or something. But sex? I _like_ sex. Big fan of that. Big. Huge.”

“Lust and sex isn’t the same thing.”

“Yeah, yeah, your first orgasm tried to kill you, I know.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that it’s not the same thing,” Derek said, opting to ignore the first reference to the Argents Jackson had ever made in Derek’s presence, both because it was momentarily unhelpful and entirely untrue (which was also something Derek did _not_ want to get into with the teenager really ever.) “Needing to feel horny to calm down is not the same as actually _needing_ _sex_ to calm down.”

“Pretty sure it’s not option one there,” Jackson told him. “Otherwise I’d be set.”

“…, ah, are-are you not—”

“Lydia will probably be breaking up with me the instant I tell her I’m moving to London, but trust me, if horniness was enough to anchor me? We’d all know it by now.”

Derek sighed internally at learning more about Jackson’s private life than he’d ever wanted to know. “And how do you want to test this out anyway?” he asked at last. “Got somebody in mind for clinical trials or something?”

“You’ll do.”

Derek snorted at the teenager. “Have you ever _been_ with a man?”

“You’ve seen Danny.”

“I’ve seen him a couple times, but I wasn’t exactly checking him out,” Derek replied carefully, remembering the glimpses he’d gotten when Derek had been tracking Scott in Derek’s old high school locker room and from that one time he’d been in Stiles’ bedroom. Danny had been fit, with dimples and dark hair whose close-cropped edges Derek could see Scott trying to copy one day. Danny had also not realized Derek could hear him when he admitted that the sight of Derek’s abs made him weak.

It was a statement that _still_ made Derek twitch with second-hand embarrassment.

“I’ve seen _way_ more of him, more often,” Jackson was saying. “How _else_ did you think he figured out he was gay?”

“Online porn. That’s how you teenagers do it now right?”

Jackson scoffed. “Please, you see this?” he said, casually lifting his shirt to show off a pack of abs that, if they weren’t one year off jailbait, might’ve actually been impressive. “You don’t _need_ online porn when you have these.”

“Right.”

“I know you know that. I saw your photo and Peter’s in the Beacon High trophy case.”

“If you saw my photo, you’d know I only had hair and eyes at sixteen, not abs.”

“I had them. Had them at twelve and kept them in good shape since.”

“Good for you.”

“Exactly,” Jackson said smugly, letting his shirt drop. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Have _you_ ever been with a guy half as good-looking as me?”

“…I started at NYU right when gay sex went legal nationwide.”

“…So yes?”

“Yeah, it- I mean, the last woman I slept with tried to kill me and _did_ kill almost everyone else I was related to, I figured- and it worked out well, it just didn’t last,” Derek rambled, not sure why he felt he had to justify himself.

Jackson blinked. “That’s gotta be the most personal sentence I’ve ever heard out of you.”

“Don’t get used it.”

“I won’t. Sad about you outlasting everyone though. I bet we’d last.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”

“You sound doubtful Alpha,” Jackson teased. “Want me to prove it?”

Derek snorted. “Bring it on,” he told the teenager, immediately beginning to regret the string of poor life choices that had led to this moment when Jackson Whittemore— incredibly irritating and secretly awesome teenager— casually stripped his shirt off and threw it down onto the floor in front of Derek’s feet.

“Oh it’s been brought,” Jackson told him.

***

“When I’m eighteen,” Jackson was commenting, “I’m supposed to get an inheritance from my parent’s car crash.”

Jackson’s hand was drifting aimlessly back and forth across Derek’s chest. The trace pressure felt good, almost reassuringly gentle. It was far gentler than the rough, demanding, sex they’d had on Derek’s couch.

Jackson, Derek had learned, viewed sex like a fight. One he was determined to him.

“Like, I have to spend that, and you can’t spend that much dead people money on booze.”

Derek hadn’t had rough sex like… _ever_ , now that he thought of it as he listened to Jackson talk from the floor of his apartment, which is where the two of them had slumped down in glowing exhaustion.

Kate had been demanding, but controlling, so she never really lost herself in sex with Derek. Not that the sex hadn’t been great, but Derek was well-adjusted enough to admit sex with Kate had always left him feeling airy, like his soul had chucked itself out of his body as a defense mechanism before Derek had known what the term “bad touch” meant. Sex with Kate hadn’t grounded him down into the feeling of his arms wrapped around another’s chest, into the heat that came from waists grinding and hands groping the way it had with Jackson.

“Probably end up converting some of it to pounds if I’m still overseas this time next year, because I’m _not_ shopping online with a trust that big.”

As for the guys from NYU, well, the internet had started spreading the hook-up culture Derek had played a bit in during high school to the kinds of people folks Beacon Hills, North California would’ve had a fit over their high school basketball captain trying to date (unless the captain had been someone like Troy Bolton, which Derek wasn’t.) And all the NYUers had known they were just hook-ups, known it was all going to be fast and ultra-casual, the kind of sex that wasn’t meant to be worth investing attentiveness in. Certainly none of them had tried half of what Jackson had, asking through encouraging groans of greedily breathless “more” and “yes” and “damn it, _move_.”

Of course, maybe that had only been the case for Derek.

“It’s gotta be a statement, a big one, and a fleet of cars and designer gear doesn’t cut it.”

And apparently they _really_ must’ve had great sex, because Derek could think about Kate and his shady history of one-night stands without having to suppress the urge to wince.

“Could buy a building. Be a super or something,” Derek said absently.

Jackson scoffed. “Yeah, a building. You know anybody who actually did that?”

“I did,” Derek said, feeling more than seeing Jackson shifting to look Derek in the face. Their legs were still entangled on the floor, the motion rubbing together parts of them together in a manner that, had Derek been less sated, would’ve resulted in very pleasurable sensations. “Bought this whole building with the fire money.”

“This whole building?

“Yes.”

“This is yours.”

“Yep,”

“You bought this.”

“Bought this and paid off my student loans.”

“You maintain this whole thing?”

“I look real good with a handyman belt on.”

“You would,” Jackson said approvingly. “So the whole train depot thing was—”

“Do you _know_ how hard getting werewolf bloodstains out of this wood floor is?” Derek interrupted, tilting his head to see the other man.

“Jerk.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Mmhmm,” Jackson murmured before kissing Derek.

For a moment, the only sounds in the loft were that of lips sliding against each other.

“Man, who’d’ve thought this’d work,” Jackson said, quietly laughing as he pulled back from Derek.

“Not me,” Derek admitted.

Jackson rolled his eyes. “Please, like you haven’t imagined—”

“I’m big into consent, for obvious reasons,” Derek said as he ran a hand along Jackson’s back. “That includes my imagination.”

“All those time in the locker room and nothing? Seriously?”

Derek snorted. “High school’s not a turn on for me, thanks.”

“Just saying, you could’ve asked me after the bite didn’t take.”

“Why would I ask someone who _physically ran—_ ”

“Wouldn’t now,” Jackson pointed out. “We’ve _bonded._ ”

“Oh good, glad we bonded before you _jump continents.”_

Jackson hummed. “Wanna see if phone sex anchors me too?” he asked, rubbing his face in the crook of Derek’s neck.”

“…Why do you say these things to me?”

“Because if getting off to hot werewolf sex is my anchor, I’m gonna need to know if I can dial it in or if I’m just gonna have to suck it up and marry one someday,” Jackson told him. “And Lydia told me all year in science that clinical trials require multiple rounds of testing, so...”

“All I meant was that it might be hard to date me from London,” Derek said as he closed his eyes. Jackson was probably a secret cuddler if the way the younger man kept moving was any sign, meaning Derek might as well get comfortable. “There’s conversations we have to have.”

“Conversations?”

“We’re using spending your orphan money as pillow talk. We need conversations.”

“Don’t worry Hale, we’ll figure it out,” Jackson whispered into Derek’s ear, the sound barely registering as he began to fall asleep. “We’re survivors. We always do.”


End file.
